So the movie hasn’t done all that well, as of last week it had dropped to 13th place (according to the website Rotten Tomatoes). I guess it was to be expected really, making sequels is an insane gamble in the first place. Making sequels without the original actors is suicidal.
Note that all of this is in retrospect, during filming you hardly ever have enough perspective to know whether you’re making art or something something else. Troy never stopped writing, which is part of the fun of making a movie like this…once you understand the continuum in which the characters exist you keep thinking of new things you can have them to do.
A few hours after the Atlanta premiere Troy and Tally phoned me, curious to know how everybody liked the movie. I think that I was correct in reporting that everybody that I spoke with enjoyed it. In the last week or two I’ve been around some of the people who worked with us on the movie and every one of them says something along the lines of “well what happened to the scene where…..”.
Some of the things people missed: the gorilla cage, a musical number that was supposed to happen about halfway through the film, the original opening title sequence that showed the boys as infants, Harry trying to get a candy bar out of a dispensing machine, the whole scene where Lloyd throws a brick through Harry’s window – only to reveal that Harry lives on the ground floor, Lloyd trying to get Principal Collins’ treasure chest over to Harry’s house, a scene with the boys in costume outside the Big A Gas & Stuff with the store clerk…..and I’m sure there are some others that I can’t think of right now.
Of all the recent films I’ve worked on, this is one that I most look forward to seeing on DVD.